too thick? Yes," said Alice; "but of course we'd have all
different names and addresses."

"We might as well do it thoroughly," said Dicky, "and send three or four
different letters each."

"And have them posted in different parts of London. Right oh!" remarked
Oswald.

"_I_ shall write a piece of poetry for mine," said Noel.

"They ought all to be on different kinds of paper," said Oswald. "Let's
go out and get the paper directly after tea."

We did, but we could only get fifteen different kinds of paper and
envelopes, though we went to every shop in the village.

At the first shop, when we said, "Please we want a penn'orth of paper
and envelopes of each of all the different kinds you keep," the lady of
the shop looked at us thinly over blue-rimmed spectacles and said, "What
for?"

And H.O. said, "To write unonymous letters."

"Anonymous letters are very wrong," the lady said, and she wouldn't sell
us any paper at all.

But at the other places we did not say what it was for, and they sold it
us. There were bluey and yellowy and grey and white kinds, and some was
violetish with violets on it, and some pink, with roses. The girls took
the florivorous ones, which Oswald thinks are unmanly for any but girls,
but you excuse their using it. It seems natural to them to mess about
like that.

We wrote the fifteen letters, disguising our handwritings as much as we
could. It was not easy. Oswald tried to write one of them with his left
hand, but the consequences were almost totally unreadable. Besides, if
any one could have read it, they would only have thought it was written
in an asylum for the insane, the writing was so delirious. So he chucked
it.

Noel was only allowed to write one poem. It began--

"Oh, Geraldine! Oh, Geraldine!
You are the loveliest heroine!
I never read about one before
That made me want to write more
Poetry. And your Venetian eyes,
They must have been an awful size;
And black and blue, and like your hair,
And your nose and chin were a perfect pair."

and so on for ages.

The other letters were all saying what a beautiful chapter "Beneath the
Doge's Home" was, and how we liked it better than the other chapters
before, and how we hoped the next would be like it. We found out when
all too late that H.O. had called it the "Dog's Home." But we hoped this
would pass unnoticed among all the others. We re